Todd Wood, founder and CEO of Cdm.press, gives an update on the firing of Lt Col Lohmeier, USAF, after he went on Wood’s show to warn about the Marxist infiltration of the military.
Tag CRT
Dave Rubin Show with Paul Rossi on Critical Race Theory
https://www.instagram.com/p/COMq3UNhcWO/?igshid=1h0pauhqrqlm9
Dave Rubin talks to Paul Rossi, a whistleblower and math teacher at Grace Church School, about the NYC private school’s critical race theory curriculum that led him to publish “I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated” on the Substack of Bari Weiss.
In this clip Paul reveals the damage being done by critical race theory being forced onto young kids. Paul describes how critical race theory in education had been building slowly for years. Recently he had noticed the damaging effects it was having on his students by making them feel like they couldn’t have opinions that differed from the social justice orthodoxy. Young kids were made to feel guilt and shame over their alleged “white privilege”. He also describes the incident that made him decide to speak up and put his job at risk.
I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated
Children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school. That’s why I am.
Paul RossiApr 13
I am a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan. Ten years ago, I changed careers when I discovered how rewarding it is to help young people explore the truth and beauty of mathematics. I love my work.
As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students. But right now, my school is asking me to embrace “antiracism” training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding.
“Antiracist” training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race. Furthermore, in order to maintain a united front for our students, teachers at Grace are directed to confine our doubts about this pedagogical framework to conversations with an in-house “Office of Community Engagement” for whom every significant objection leads to a foregone conclusion. Any doubting students are likewise “challenged” to reframe their views to conform to this orthodoxy.
I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent.
My school, like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed. Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.”
All of this is done in the name of “equity,” but it is the opposite of fair. In reality, all of this reinforces the worst impulses we have as human beings: our tendency toward tribalism and sectarianism that a truly liberal education is meant to transcend.
Recently, I raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. (Such racially segregated sessions are now commonplace at my school.) It was a bait-and-switch “self-care” seminar that labelled “objectivity,” “individualism,” “fear of open conflict,” and even “a right to comfort” as characteristics of white supremacy. I doubted that these human attributes — many of them virtues reframed as vices — should be racialized in this way. In the Zoom chat, I also questioned whether one must define oneself in terms of a racial identity at all. My goal was to model for students that they should feel safe to question ideological assertions if they felt moved to do so.
It seemed like my questions broke the ice. Students and even a few teachers offered a broad range of questions and observations. Many students said it was a more productive and substantive discussion than they expected.
However, when my questions were shared outside this forum, violating the school norm of confidentiality, I was informed by the head of the high school that my philosophical challenges had caused “harm” to students, given that these topics were “life and death matters, about people’s flesh and blood and bone.” I was reprimanded for “acting like an independent agent of a set of principles or ideas or beliefs.” And I was told that by doing so, I failed to serve the “greater good and the higher truth.”
He further informed me that I had created “dissonance for vulnerable and unformed thinkers” and “neurological disturbance in students’ beings and systems.” The school’s director of studies added that my remarks could even constitute harassment.
A few days later, the head of school ordered all high school advisors to read a public reprimand of my conduct out loud to every student in the school. It was a surreal experience, walking the halls alone and hearing the words emitting from each classroom: “Events from last week compel us to underscore some aspects of our mission and share some thoughts about our community,” the statement began. “At independent schools, with their history of predominantly white populations, racism colludes with other forms of bias (sexism, classism, ableism and so much more) to undermine our stated ideals, and we must work hard to undo this history.”
Students from low-income families experience culture shock at our school. Racist incidents happen. And bias can influence relationships. All true. But addressing such problems with a call to “undo history” lacks any kind of limiting principle and pairs any allegation of bigotry with a priori guilt. My own contract for next year requires me to “participate in restorative practices designed by the Office of Community Engagement” in order to “heal my relationship with the students of color and other students in my classes.” The details of these practices remain unspecified until I agree to sign.
I asked my uncomfortable questions in the “self-care” meeting because I felt a duty to my students. I wanted to be a voice for the many students of different backgrounds who have approached me over the course of the past several years to express their frustration with indoctrination at our school, but are afraid to speak up.
They report that, in their classes and other discussions, they must never challenge any of the premises of our “antiracist” teachings, which are deeply informed by Critical Race Theory. These concerns are confirmed for me when I attend grade-level and all-school meetings about race or gender issues. There, I witness student after student sticking to a narrow script of acceptable responses. Teachers praise insights when they articulate the existing framework or expand it to apply to novel domains. Meantime, it is common for teachers to exhort students who remain silent that “we really need to hear from you.”
But what does speaking up mean in a context in which white students are asked to interrogate their “white saviorism,” but also “not make their antiracist practice about them”? We are compelling them to tiptoe through a minefield of double-binds. According to the school’s own standard for discursive violence, this constitutes abuse.
Every student at the school must also sign a “Student Life Agreement,” which requires them to aver that “the world as we understand it can be hard and extremely biased,” that they commit to “recognize and acknowledge their biases when we come to school, and interrupt those biases,” and accept that they will be “held accountable should they fall short of the agreement.” A recent faculty email chain received enthusiastic support for recommending that we “‘officially’ flag students” who appear “resistant” to the “culture we are trying to establish.”
When I questioned what form this resistance takes, examples presented by a colleague included “persisting with a colorblind ideology,” “suggesting that we treat everyone with respect,” “a belief in meritocracy,” and “just silence.” In a special assembly in February 2019, our head of school said that the impact of words and images perceived as racist — regardless of intent — is akin to “using a gun or a knife to kill or injure someone.”
Imagine being a young person in this environment. Would you risk voicing your doubts, especially if you had never heard a single teacher question it?
Last fall, juniors and seniors in my Art of Persuasion class expressed dismay with the “Grace bubble” and sought to engage with a wider range of political viewpoints. Since the BLM protests often came up in our discussions, I thought of assigning Glenn Loury, a Brown University professor and public intellectual whose writings express a nuanced, center-right position on racial issues in America. Unfortunately, my administration put the kibosh on my proposal.
The head of the high school responded to me that “people like Loury’s lived experience—and therefore his derived social philosophy” made him an exception to the rule that black thinkers acknowledge structural racism as the paramount impediment in society. He added that “the moment we are in institutionally and culturally, does not lend itself to dispassionate discussion and debate,” and discussing Loury’s ideas would “only confuse and/or enflame students, both those in the class and others that hear about it outside of the class.” He preferred I assign “mainstream white conservatives,” effectively denying black students the opportunity to hear from a black professor who holds views that diverge from the orthodoxy pushed on them.
I find it self-evidently racist to filter the dissemination of an idea based on the race of the person who espouses it. I find the claim that exposing 11th and 12th graders to diverse views on an important societal issue will only “confuse” them to be characteristic of a fundamentalist religion, not an educational philosophy.
My administration says that these constraints on discourse are necessary to shield students from harm. But it is clear to me that these constraints serve primarily to shield their ideology from harm — at the cost of students’ psychological and intellectual development.
It was out of concern for my students that I spoke out in the “self-care” meeting, and it is out of that same concern that I write today. I am concerned for students who crave a broader range of viewpoints in class. I am concerned for students trained in “race explicit” seminars to accept some opinions as gospel, while discarding as immoral disconfirming evidence. I am concerned for the dozens of students during my time at Grace who shared with me that they have been reproached by teachers for expressing views that are not aligned with the new ideology.
One current student paid me a visit a few weeks ago. He tapped faintly on my office door, anxiously looking both ways before entering. He said he had come to offer me words of support for speaking up at the meeting.
I thanked him for his comments, but asked him why he seemed so nervous. He told me he was worried that a particular teacher might notice this visit and “it would mean that I would get in trouble.” He reported to me that this teacher once gave him a lengthy “talking to” for voicing a conservative opinion in class. He then remembered with a sigh of relief that this teacher was absent that day. I looked him in the eyes. I told him he was a brave young man for coming to see me, and that he should be proud of that.
Then I sent him on his way. And I resolved to write this piece.
CORRECTION: The anecdote about Glenn Loury was originally attributed to the head of Grace Church School. In fact, those statements were made by the head of the high school. Apologies for the error.
Healthy Families Make A Healthy World!
Bari Weiss and Critical Race Theory @JennyHatch
This post also appeared on my Substack this morning…
Three men stood up this past week after saying ENOUGH!
I was so pleased this morning to watch the zoom call between Bari Weiss, Paul Rossi, and Andrew Gutmann that was taped last night. The link is here if you want to give it a listen.
Last week my friend Gary Thompson also stood up to the woke mob and spoke out against Critical Race Theory in a nationally syndicated radio show with Kate Dalley.
I personally believe these three men and their families are the bravest people in our country right now. It would be worth your time to listen to the shows and then step up and use your voice to help stamp out the racist ideology known as Critical Race Theory.
One of the questions that really touched my heart during Baris interview with Paul and Andrew was when Andrew explained how we as parents should be setting powerful examples for our children of bravery and doing what is right knowing that we might be hammered for it.
Here are a few clips from the interview
I was also stunned by Andrews story of how his daughter spoke up and wrote a letter and that they are probably shunned right now from all private schools in New York and are looking for alternatives for middle school education. I personally believe the middle school years are the absolute best time for students to hang out with their parents and get a grip on the adult world. Especially that key 7th grade year when so many children make permanent decisions on which direction they want their lives to go.
I want to share just a bit of my own story to wrap up this post because I have lived the woke existence in Colorado for the past thirty years.
When we were expecting our second child in 1991 we moved to Boulder Colorado. Boulder has a reputation of being the most highly educated county in America. We have more PhD’s than any other place in the world and conservatives joke that we live in The People’s Republic of Boulder.
I have been an out of the closet conservative willing to speak up publicly about political and education issues and because I was one of the founding mothers of the Tea Party, I have interacted with people from all over the political spectrum who also stepped up to help with various conservative causes. I also engaged with the press quite a bit. So, many people in my community know that I am a conservative with a voice and an online platform.
Because of this fact, I have had the wild experience of quiet personal conversations with many people confessing to me that they too are conservative but for the sake of their businesses, they could not be open about it.
This has happened so many times, especially with small business owners, that I have wondered if Boulder County is just one big mass of fakers who are pretending to be woke, but are really and truly conservative in the quiet of the day.
In thinking about how to flip things quickly, and unlike Andrew who believes it is going to take a long time to fix this problem because of how entrenched it is in our schools and institutions, I believe the quickest way to fix it is to do what President Trump was doing just before he left office. He signed an executive order demonetizing it. Meaning, no more tax dollars were going to be used to sensitivity train people who worked for the military and the federal government.
President Biden immediately put it back in place once he came into office, but it was remarkable to observe what happened when the little cottage industry of “educators” was being deprived of their income.
Those yelling the loudest about cancel culture being cancelled are those who are making money from it.
Join Fair For All by Clicking the image below.
Healthy Families Make A Healthy World!
Dr. Gary Thompson on Critical Race Theory
Dear Community & Neighbors:
I have been flooded with requests to share the video of the mini town hall meeting that I was invited to speak at in Murray regarding Critical Race Theory.
It was a pretty powerful and intimate meeting. I was emotionally and intellectually drained for three days after I went home to my family. I knew this was going to be different when I looked into the eyes of many of my white neighbors and fellow parents and saw fear and sadness. It became my sole goal at that moment to assist with eliminating that fear, as well as to provide some level of hope.
My COO Brook Wardle has the tape, and over the next few weeks we will be working on editing the tape and releasing many clips of the meeting.
Releasing the whole tape in its entirety is not a option due to the extreme level of intimacy and subject matters that were based on my family history and legacy. I also went after BLM hard. Real hard. Perhaps in hindsight? Too hard. 😉
That’s a legacy that mainstream media and progressive trolls on Facebook/Twitter will never have the opportunity to mock or re-edit to suit their nefarious purposes.
In the meantime, I suggest that you hear Kate Daley’s national radio interview she did with me last month on the same subject. (Someone told me a few weeks ago that it got over 10 million views.). I don’t have the link right now, but it’s easy to find via Google.
One national radio interview….one national tv interview….and one town hall meeting. I put myself out there and laid it all on the line. As such, I really don’t feel the need to make the public appearance rounds of your local school boards, the State Board, the Tribune, and especially, our newly woke (and filled with “white guilt”) Republican lawmakers and Governor regarding this subject matter.
It would destroy my family. It would emotionally destroy me. That’s not gonna happen.
I brought the proverbial horse to the water at great risk, but I’m afraid that it is now your turn to drink it and then rise up against this garbage with every ounce of your being.
This WILL destroy your community.
This will break apart many families.
This will emotionally harm your vulnerable children on more levels than I can write at the moment.
Being the expert of your child takes a lot of “stones”, and can be frightening….but please believe me when I tell you that it is worth the journey.
God bless all of you parental rock stars.
“Parents are, and must always be, the resident experts of their own children.”
Best regards;
Gary Thompson, Psy.D.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/utahnsagainstcommoncore/permalink/3549442091948509/
Dr. Thompson explains why he is limiting his exposure to the media in this Facebook post.
Tomorrow will be the last time I speak publicly on race issues and the Critical Race Agenda during a invite only community townhall meeting in Murray for about 40-50 local Murray parents.
One hour long. I speak for 30 minutes, then I open it up to the room for questions.
No Press. No cameras. The only camera that will be in the room will be mine.
I will send out various clips of interest to community leaders in education…..then I’m done.
I will leave my community with a national radio interview, a national tv interview, clips from this parent townhall. Other than that? Nothing.
We are in the midst of a national and local race civil war. I promised a year ago on this site that my family will not participate, and we will watch from the sidelines as our community and country rip each other apart emotionally, and otherwise.
Could I do more? Sure.
Should I do more? Nope. I’m not sacrificing my family and our mental health to wage a war against politicians , the national/local media, and the Utah State Board of Education.
My kids and family are healthy and safe and removed from this toxic garbage.
I wish you all luck with yours, and I believe I have provided enough information (at great risk I may add) to the community to the extent where I can sleep very well at night.
“Parents are, and must always be, the resident experts of their OWN children.”
Best regards;
Gary
Gary was on the Kate Daly Show. This is a MUST LISTEN show!
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/agNNADzzJfCYLHLv7
I will share the video clips of Dr. Thompson at the townhall as they appear on the web.
PS I have been stunned by the brave fathers who are standing up right now. Bari Weiss profiled the dad from New York who wrote a letter that is ripping around the internet right now.
It is embedded below.
April 13, 2021
Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,
Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child’s education is irreparable.
It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed.
I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died.
I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school. Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades. Ask any girl, of any race, if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they have spent up to 13 years of their life, and you are bound to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat-out misrepresentation of our country’s history and adds no understanding to any of today’s societal issues. If anything, longstanding and widespread policies such as affirmative action, point in precisely the opposite direction.
I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley’s oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies.
I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism.
I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to parents and unbecoming of any educational institution, let alone one of Brearley’s caliber.
I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.
l object to Brearley’s advocacy for groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti family, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic organization that neither speaks for the majority of the Black community in this country, nor in any way, shape or form, represents their best interests.
I object to, as we have been told time and time again over the past year, that the school’s first priority is the safety of our children. For goodness sake, Brearley is a school, not a hospital! The number one priority of a school has always been, and always will be, education. Brearley’s misguided priorities exemplify both the safety culture and “cover-your-ass” culture that together have proved so toxic to our society and have so damaged the mental health and resiliency of two generations of children, and counting.
I object to the gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums. I object to the censorship of books that have been taught for generations because they contain dated language potentially offensive to the thin-skinned and hypersensitive (something that has already happened in my daughter’s 4th grade class). I object to the lowering of standards for the admission of students and for the hiring of teachers. I object to the erosion of rigor in classwork and the escalation of grade inflation. Any parent with eyes open can foresee these inevitabilities should antiracism initiatives be allowed to persist.
We have today in our country, from both political parties, and at all levels of government, the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s history. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the training grounds for those leaders. Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history.
Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think. I object that the school is now fostering an environment where our daughters, and our daughters’ teachers, are afraid to speak their minds in class for fear of “consequences.” I object that Brearley is trying to usurp the role of parents in teaching morality, and bullying parents to adopt that false morality at home. I object that Brearley is fostering a divisive community where families of different races, which until recently were part of the same community, are now segregated into two. These are the reasons why we can no longer send our daughter to Brearley.
Over the past several months, I have personally spoken to many Brearley parents as well as parents of children at peer institutions. It is abundantly clear that the majority of parents believe that Brearley’s antiracism policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous. Many believe, as I do, that these policies will ultimately destroy what was until recently, a wonderful educational institution. But as I am sure will come as no surprise to you, given the insidious cancel culture that has of late permeated our society, most parents are too fearful to speak up.
But speak up you must. There is strength in numbers and I assure you, the numbers are there. Contact the administration and the Board of Trustees and demand an end to the destructive and anti-intellectual claptrap known as antiracism. And if changes are not forthcoming then demand new leadership. For the sake of our community, our city, our country and most of all, our children, silence is no longer an option.
Respectfully,
Andrew Gutmann
More on Andrews letter at The Daily Mail HERE.
